Thanks Lin....... I can see for stationary wildlife the SD1m would be great. I have a area within a few miles of me that is loaded with American Bald Eagles all year long and to stop their wing tips in flight 1/1250 shutter speed is about its minimum requirement. That pretty well dictates my other settings including iso. Ideally I would love to shoot them at base iso.

Photographing Eagles get's near addictive in nature and I have enough inflight shots for a lifetime but like any addiction you just have to get more

Hi Jim,

I can agree that for Eagles in flight, especially if not soaring, you would definitely do better with something like the new Nikon D7100 which would give you lots of resolution and great high ISO as well. Couple that with a decent and reasonably fast zoom like the Sigma 120-300 F2.8 and you might have an unbeatable combination. For those times when you actually "must" have greater than 450mm equivalent focal length, just add a 1.4x teleconverter and you are still at F4 with 630mm equivalency. Generally, I've found that for birds in flight more than 500mm is difficult to handle so a 120-300 F2.8 would for me be a much better choice than say one of Nikon's 80-400 VR models which would be arguably "cheaper" but not nearly the quality.